Are you finding that your site has high bounce rates? If your traffic seems to be leaving in higher than normal rates you might want to consider load time as one of the possible culprits.

Speed

In studies it has been shown that about 50 percent of people expect a page to load within 2 seconds. Most of the other 50 percent expect it to load within 3 seconds. If your site isn’t loading fast enough then this is definitely the culprit. Below is a few numbers that engineers rely on when designing user interfaces.

0.1 second: Instantaneous action makes the user feel in control. It provides the feeling of direct manipulation and avoids the feeling that the result is generated by the computer and not their own action.

1 second: Users will notice the delay and feel like the system is generating results. Users will focus on their own train of thought and then come back to their sense of control. This is the ideal for websites.

10 seconds: Noticeable delay which makes customers feel entirely out of control. Users mind wanders and will almost certainly leave. Loading bars, progress indicators or a timer of some kind will notify and reassure users and limit their discomfort.

Conversion rates on pages with a load time of more than 1 and less than 2 seconds have the absolute highest conversion rate according to Googles statistics. Even more interesting to note is that for the visitors that stick with you despite the wait time, each second of waiting causes another 7% decrease in the likelihood of conversion. Literally speaking every second counts when visitors are making the decision to purchase.

Walmart reported that with a 1 second decrease in website loading time they found a 2% increase in traffic and for every 100-millisecond decrease of page load time they reported a conversion spike of at least 1%.